


take this pink ribbon off my eyes

by nebulastucky



Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, Getting Together, Karaoke, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Sexism, Pre-Canon, Self-Discovery, Teenage Rebellion, and they were rommates, oh my god they were roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 16:24:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19931014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulastucky/pseuds/nebulastucky
Summary: Carol Danvers is six years old and her father tells her no, you can’t have the airplane, go play with the doll your aunt got you.She is six years old and her brother is telling her no, you can’t play cowboys with us, you’re a girl.She is six years old and her mother won’t dress her in anything but skirts and dresses, no matter how many times she comes back inside filthy.orCarol discovers that the world isn't fair, and it isn't kind, but at least there's music and girls that smile at her.





	take this pink ribbon off my eyes

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from just a girl by no doubt

Carol Danvers is six years old and her father tells her _no, you can’t have the airplane, go play with the doll your aunt got you._

She is six years old and her brother is telling her _no, you can’t play cowboys with us, you’re a girl._

She is six years old and her mother won’t dress her in anything but skirts and dresses, no matter how many times she comes back inside filthy.

* * *

She is eleven years old and feeling the wind in her hair and adrenaline in her veins like she’s never felt it before. Her brother says she’s going too fast, she needs to go slow. She puts her foot down, determined and desperate to prove him wrong, and suddenly she’s launched over the hay bales and off the track. 

She is eleven years old and flying for the first time.

She lands in a heap on the grass. There’s shouting from somewhere to her left, and smoke billowing behind her, and then her brother’s voice again. _What were you thinking,_ he says, _I told you not to do that._ She can’t see where he is. She scowls at the ground in his place. 

_You never listen to me,_ he says. _You never listen to anyone,_ he says.

 _God, I hate you sometimes,_ he says. She believes him. 

Then, and only then, _are you hurt?_

* * *

She is fourteen years old, furious at the world, and sick of womanhood already. She is sick of being treated like porcelain by her father, sick of being treated like dirt by her brother, sick of being treated like meat by any man on the street. 

A man in his twenties whistles at her from his car. She can’t help but feel exposed, even under all these layers. She turns a corner, just to get away, and comes face to face with Uncle Sam, asking her to join the army.

Maybe just this once, she’ll do what she’s told.

* * *

She is fifteen years old and learning so much. She sees theorems and formulas and numbers when she closes her eyes at night. Rules recite themselves in her dreams.

_In an inertial frame of reference, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force._

There are only two other girls in her physics class, and none in AP algebra. She doesn’t know why that feels wrong.

_A vector graph can be used to discern the overall direction and magnitude when there are a number of forces acting on one body._

There are five girls in shop, though, and that’s pretty good. She can’t stop watching their hands, so much gentler with their projects than the boys. Delicate fingers wrap around the handles of hand saws and hammers, to create sturdy structures and strong young women, in more ways than one.

_Between any two point masses in the universe there is a force of attraction directly proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them._

Every now and then she catches sight of one of the shop girls about to tie up her hair away from her face, deftly scraping a fresh perm off the back of her neck. She looks away, for fear of being caught staring, but the image stays with her for days. The fluttering in her tummy stays for longer. 

* * *

She is sixteen years old and working her first ever job in the diner nine blocks from home. The pay is dirt and the work is worse, but it’s cash in her pocket at the end of the day. 

She tries to be nice to the guys who come in already greasy, with eyes that sit on the nametag on her shirt far longer than it takes to read the five letters printed there. More often than not, they get a little something extra in their burgers, something to keep her sane while the sugar-sweet smile on her face begs them for pocket change tips.

She tells her father, now tired and grey, about their wandering eyes and restless hands. He tells her to button her blouse up to the collar. 

* * *

She is seventeen years old, and living on her own for the first time. She doesn’t feel anything but free.

She knows no one in this town. 

She’s been alone before, so she deals with it the best way she knows how: she buries herself in books and music. 

Her tiny two-room apartment is two miles from town. Her spare time is split evenly between the local library, working in the grocery store three streets away, and sitting in the record store next door just _wishing._

She wishes time would move faster. She wishes she made more money than just enough to keep her from going hungry. She wishes she could understand the feeling in her chest when the pretty girl in the library smiles at her through gaps in the shelves.

This is a college town, and it’s by passing the almost constant student protests that she hears the word _lesbian_ for the first time.

She runs through the park across from the library every morning, Walkman in hand. She listens to anything she can get her hands on - pop and punk and glam and rock and disco and whatever Blondie are calling themselves now. She starts wearing a sweatshirt when she notices the looks her tank top gets.

The pretty girl still smiles at her.

Her life changes in the middle of summer, as she sits on the floor in a new apartment with three roommates and ten strangers, huddled around an ancient and dying TV set. For the first time, there is a channel just for music, and her mind is blown.

They sit, a room full of strangers, and watch the first ever Music Television broadcast, and suddenly they are bonded. When it’s over, she pins a reminder to the fridge to buy _Video Killed The Radio Star_ the next time she’s in the record store.

Thirty minutes later, after seeing Chrissie Hynde as a waitress vying for the attention and respect of her customers, she adds _Brass in Pocket_ by The Pretenders to what is slowly becoming a long list.

* * *

She is eighteen years old when she joins the Air Force. 

She breaks her arm on the last day of basics training, flying through the air grasping for a rope she’ll never reach, and thinks she’s done for. The people watching from the ground - always people watching her, judging her, telling her she’ll never make it - don’t move an inch to save her.

The army pays her way through a three year physics degree at a community college to compensate her, and tells her to try again when she’s done.

* * *

She sees Maria Rambeau on her third day of classes, and time stops.

The professor - elderly, male, not a threat - asks a question about planetary mass calculations. Hands shoot up around the room while she racks her brain for an answer.

“You,” he says, “Mr-?”

“Rambeau. And it’s _Miss_.”

Just like that, she is no longer Carol Danvers, nineteen years old, runaway, Air Force discharge, woman on the verge.

She is now just Carol, twisting in her second row seat at the sound of a woman’s voice somewhere behind her. She’s vaguely aware of the professor apologising and Miss Rambeau answering his question, but she can’t tear her eyes away from her. And when she does, she can’t hear the end of the class over the sound of her own racing heartbeat.

* * *

Miss Maria Rambeau was born and raised on a farm in Louisiana, and hopes to retire there someday. She has two older brothers, both stationed overseas, and parents who don’t understand her. She has dreams of seeing her home from the stars, but will settle for the cockpit of a Thunderbird.

Miss Maria Rambeau has eyes that sparkle when she smiles and the most infectious laugh Carol has ever heard. 

She decides to make it her life’s mission to hear as much of it as she can.

Carol has known Miss Maria Rambeau for all of two hours over coffee when she starts to feel that nervous churning in her stomach, and she’s reminded of her roommate in that sleepy college town, and the girl in the library, and the girls from shop class. She doesn’t know what it means, but it’s exhilarating, and it doesn’t stop once she notices it. 

Carol Danvers is nineteen years old when she falls in love.

* * *

They lean on each other, support each other, to get through basics training. 

Maria pushes Carol harder than their drill sergeants, and she soars past the other recruits in every challenge they face because of it. Carol puts herself in the firing line and takes every comment from a man about _women can’t be pilots_ and _you know why it’s called a cockpit, right sweetheart_ on the chin, like she’s done her whole life.

Carol’s heart races every time Maria walks into the room, or offers her the end of a cup of coffee, or whispers goodnight into the underside of Carol’s bunk above her. 

Now, she thinks, she has an idea of what that means.

They blast through training together, one unit, and come out the other side with heads held high and the beginnings of laugh lines in the corners of their eyes. When Carol suggests maybe they could split the rent on a place just off-base, Maria smiles at her, wide and all kinds of glorious.

* * *

Carol Danvers is twenty-one years old, sitting in a booth at Pancho’s and nursing the third legal beer of her life. She is alone, for now, content in watching the world. 

The world has been waiting to be served at the bar for five minutes, and looks right back at her with a shy smile on her lips.

* * *

Carol Danvers is twenty-two years old in that same booth at Pancho’s, and just tipsy enough to lose her inhibitions. She pulls Maria by the hand - her skin is soft, and her fingers aren’t afraid to lock into Carol’s, and Carol could scream - to the corner reserved for Thursday night karaoke. They stumble onto the makeshift stage made of well-worn wooden pallets, fingers still tangled, and they sing. 

They’re not good, but they’re drunk, and the look on Maria’s face when Carol sing-yells _come on pretty baby, kiss me deadly,_ gives her a rush she’s never felt before. Carol twirls her, and the song ends with their faces so close their noses touch, and Carol can smell cheap beer on her breath.

“We should get out of here,” Maria says, not moving an inch, in a way that’s very much on purpose.

“Yeah, okay,” Carol says. 

She slips her microphone into the hands of a drunk woman demanding everyone listen to her rendition of _Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,_ and only drops Maria’s gaze to find her footing as she drags them both across the sticky floor and out the front door.

They stop at a liquor store on the way home, and spend their last $8 on the cheapest bottle of rosé they could find, because the cold night air makes the buzz of beer that tastes like dishwater wear off faster than it should.

There’s an electric tension between them as they walk back out, automatic doors sliding shut behind them. It hums under Carol’s skin, like a bird, captive, screaming to fly free.

It’s three blocks to their apartment. Three blocks of taking turns on the wine, three blocks of tripping over their own feet, three blocks of laughing until tears stream down their faces. Three blocks of wondering how long they can keep the bird trapped.

Carol shuts the door, finally, and hears Maria say her name, like the prayers her Nana used to whisper to herself. 

She turns, and is met by those soft hands cupped on the sides of her face, and Maria’s sweet wine lips pressed to hers. The bottle slips from Carol’s hand onto the floor with a dull _clink._

Her hands fly to Maria’s waist, clutching her jacket like a lifeline, and she leans back against the door. She tilts her head up, chasing the two inches Maria has on her, and parts her lips, just the barest amount.

The bird sings.

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on tumblr @macdenlesbian and on twitter @carlyraejervis


End file.
